Yea, it will only cost you 5 Billion and the next national election..... Don't be fooled, this isn't about money... it's about votes.... For BOTH sides.
What a free market you have there, SO FREE, so free to be f######. LOL.
Dude, the free market can kill AT&T for this as well. This could be a nightmare for their PR department as they try to "fix" the damage should this go viral or something. (and no, Slashdot is NOT going viral..)
The customer is free to leave, subject to their contract restrictions of course, should AT&T squander all their good will with their customers.
The problem with DuckDuckGo is that, when it comes to searching
Who would have thought that indexing the internet and the algorithms behind it would be a hard problem?
Oh, it's not the search and indexing of the internet that's hard.. I participated in building a web crawler that could index the internet if you let it run long enough, problem was the indexes quickly got huge and unmanageable. What's hard? It's the return of results in a reasonable amount of time that's hard..
Manufacturing can be clean or dirty, depending on how you do it but it's 100% pollution free after that.
Fossil fuels also go through a manufacturing process which can be clean or dirty and it's 100% polluting after that.
What does that even mean? There are 100 years old hydroelectric power plants still in use today.
Can you imagine the environmental impact statement of Hoover Dam today? Just the manufacturing of the concrete would be a non-starter based on the C02 it would release and I cannot imagine what they'd say about the river wildlife it would disrupt.
Yes, I'm being tongue in cheek a bit here, but EVERYTHING we do to generate electricity on an industrial scale is dirty business in some way.
There's no pollution in the disposal after its life expectancy?
Oh, it exists, but is insignificant compared to fossil fuel.
Just dumping things in a landfill might not look pretty but it is a lot better than burning it up.
I'm curious what you think pollution is here..
Fossil fuels, natural gas, oil, coal, have varying levels of waste though their life cycles as does Wind, Solar and other forms of "green" energy. Until we actually define what is pollution and what's not we are all playing an apples and oranges game anyway.
I'm going to reiterate what I'm saying about EV's again.
EV's will NOT be purchased in sufficient numbers to stop the growth of demand in the gasoline market. 2-3% is not enough volume. Gasoline usage will continue to increase.
We can argue about WHY 2-3% is all the sales EV's can manage if you like, but be clear what I'm saying.
The reasons why EV's are not more popular are pretty clear.
1. PRICE - They are more expensive to purchase. And not just a little bit more, a LOT more.
2. Range Anxiety - Because it takes a long time to refuel them, folks worry about getting stuck waiting. Americans loath waiting. We also don't like thinking ahead. Both are required to road trip with an EV, and we Americans like our road trips, or at least having the option of taking one. Remember that in the USA we have our population spread over a HUGE area, we drive very long distances as a result. EV's suffer because their range is limited and the refueling time is long on road trips. Thus range anxiety is real, even if 95% of the trips taken don't push the limits at all.
3. Gasoline prices - The ROI of buying an EV right now don't make much sense with gasoline under $2/gal. What's the break even now? 5 years? 10? Where I live, gas prices have fallen greatly, while electricity prices have risen significantly, this makes the ROI of that EV even further out than before.
4. Maintenance costs - Yea, overall they may be cheaper after 10 years, but you will be replacing that battery just about the time you break even at current fuel prices. Sinking 1/3rd of the vehicle's initial value back into the car to keep it on the road just isn't a popular thing, but if you don't drive that EV for 20 or so years, you literally saved nothing for all that money you put up front.
To that I would point out that EV's #1 reason for being unpopular is even AFTER significant government regulation advantages, both after tax abatements and the CAFE fleet mileage standards. We are literally forcing manufacturers to sell these things, paying a significant part of their development costs and paying consumers to take them, and still 3% is all we can manage? I must be right about something here...
And more on your ignorance: while LI batteries may come with a "charge cycle rating", what appears to affect lifetime most is time spent at 100% SoC. Rapid charging at high SoC and temperature all add to capacity loss. Battery chemistry also affects life.
Most EV manufacturers provide a means to regulate charging to something less than 100% -- either manually setting the charge limit, or hiding some battery capacity. In this way, the lifetime of the LI battery can be much greater than 400-1200 cycles.
EV manufacturers also reduce charge speeds at higher SoC and regulate battery temperatures to improve life. In this way, a long life can be expected from many EV batteries.
Again,I say the following..
Sure, if you don't use all the battery capacity you purchase, they can and will last longer, a lot longer. HOWEVER, this just means that you pay more for the vehicle as battery capacity costs money. It also means that you choose to charge to less than full range and need to drive it less than the full distance to get the best battery life you can. AND if you cannot do the above, you will wear out your battery pack quicker and be in need of a replacement much sooner than what you may be able to afford.
So you pay more for the vehicle, have to use it at less than full capacity at less than full range to make it last. You also have to PLAN ahead if you want to use the full range, you have to plan your road trips around charging stations and charging delays. So paying more for the vehicle and it's inconvenient too? Not a good set of selling points....
But that's my point... I'm not saying that EV's don't work, I'm saying that they won't be purchased by consumers in large enough numbers to make much of a dent in fossil fuel demand. At least not in the foreseeable future.
So, to summarize.. You paid for battery capacity you don't use regularly. Of course, if you don't take the individual cells though a complete discharge charge cycle, it's going to last a lot longer.... BUT you pay for all that capacity, you bought a bigger battery and paid more for the car.
So by paying MORE for the vehicle, you get one that has a bigger battery and lasts longer.... Problem is you end up paying more per mile to drive that thing, given today's fuel costs, a LOT more, at least initially. What's the ROI on a Tesla these days? How far do you have to drive it before you make up the price you'd pay buying gasoline? Right now, (unless Tesla's price has come way down) I'm guessing the break even point is still way past 100K miles. BUT, if you regularly drove that Tesla to it's range limits before you charged it nearly full to do it again, you are going to wear out that battery pack pretty darn quick.
Range anxiety is real and requires that you at least THINK about road trips in advance. You do NOT want to get stuck someplace with your Tesla and a 15A 115VAC plugin where you will be lucky to get under 10 Miles per hour of charge... It will be a LONG wait to get say 50 miles of range, or say you need to top off while at grandma's house in the middle of nowhere, you better have a few days. Americans are not used to having to think though such things, so they get anxious about it, and that is another reason to not buy an EV. Cost first, Range anxiety second.
However, my point here is not that EV's won't work, nor that they don't work. My point is that they are NOT going to be taking over enough of the national private vehicle fleet to have much effect on fossil fuel use. They may reduce the rate of increase in demand, but refiners can count on an ever increasing demand over time. EV's are just not cheap enough to be the vehicle of choice and that's not changing. They are WAY more expensive to build and coupled with range anxiety issues simply will not be purchased in large enough numbers in the foreseeable future.
There is another way in which you are ignorant. You claim that EVs don't have sufficient range for commuting for most drivers, yet, here is a study that shows that EVs can easily meet the requirements of 95% of all trips:
Sure 95% of trips but folks have range anxiety anyway because they worry that you never know when you will hit that 5% trip beyond your range. The problem is that folks don't want a car they have to leave at home when they head to grandma's house, especially a car that costs way more than your average vehicle for which they struggle to make the monthly payments on to start with. So folks opt for zero range anxiety and buy fossil fueled cars.
As for life of the batteries, life depends on usage (charge to 100%?), and chemistry. Actual studies on real Tesla batteries show a much longer typical life:
But they do wear out. Prius batteries where degrading their range limits in about 5-6 years, if my friend's car was a valid example. He was getting 70% of his initial new range at about 5 years. Yea, it's not a 100% EV, but it's a data point.
I understand that batteries wear out at different rates, depending on how fast and far they are discharged and charged, temperature and a whole host of variables, but they DO wear out. Plus the problem will compound itself over time, as your battery range decreases and you start using a higher and higher percentage of it each day you will be wearing it out faster. Rule of numb is 1200 cycles is the high end and unless you have a less than average commute, you are going to get about 5-6 years, maybe a bit more, but once the payments stop on your new car purchase, you will be looking to finance a battery replacement, which will be a significant portion of a new car cost.
Most folks who look at the economics of this, coupled with the range anxiety and up front purchase price differential, won't touch an EV. It just doesn't make immediate financial sense to pay the price of a luxury car, buy and install a $5k charger in your house on top of that, then in 5-6 years have to sink half the price of a new car to keep it on the road... Then, where it may be great 95% of the time, when you want to take a long trip to grandma's house and have to stop every 200 miles for an hour or so coming and going (assuming there are charging stations properly located) it starts looking more like a toy and not a car.
I dare say you haven't considered all this and I'd bet you don't own an EV and have any experience with them either. But I'm the ignorant one? Yea right.
Yes, you are the ignorant one. We have not one, but two EVs in my household: a Model 3 and a Leaf.
I'm glad they work for you, but they won't work for me and many others who think about it don't think they would work for them either. Face it, if you took away the CAFE fleet mileage standards, EV's would die as fast as a field of clover in death valley in summer. Few could afford one (they cost more to build than fossil fueled cars by far), They have higher maintenance costs per mile, and right now with gasoline running $1.70/gal in my neck of the woods are going to cost you way more to drive per mile when it's all said and done. I'll get further on my dollar than you in the long run, at least at current fuel prices.
Enjoy your financial boondoggle... Two EV's? Wow, they got you twice. Let me guess, you purchase your Electricity on the "all wind power" source and pay more for it too... So you pay a premium to dive those EV's and who knows what else you pay more for. I'll stick to my cheap, comfortable and quick to fill up gasoline powered pickup truck thank you. If gasoline gets too expensive I'll convert it to natural gas, which will be cheap for as long as that vehicle will go down the road safely. I'll be money ahead of an EV, and miles ahead of it on a road trip too.:)
So, I take it you are for NOT following the law then? What kind of country do you want? Or is this just "GET TRUMP" at any cost, including abandoning the rule of law.... I sure hope you don't believe that, but it sure seems like that's what you want.
Lithium Ion batteries have a "charge cycle" rating of between 400-1200 cycles. IF you use your EV every day, or nearly every day of the year to drive to work, you are going to have about 300 charge cycles a year (5 work days and 1 day of weekend driving). That makes your battery life a maximum of 4 years.
Another problem is loss of capacity. Once you reach the point where your EV cannot make it to work and back on a charge and have at least SOME reserve capacity to hit the grocery store or pick up the kids from school, you will be needing a new battery long before it stops working.
These facts are hard and range anxiety is the second most important reason folks don't buy EV's, price is the first. If your EV's range is ever decreasing due to battery wear, that just means folks won't be as likely to initially buy EV's and less likely to keep them as they wear. With repair costs (battery replacement) being as high as it is (as much as half the original purchase price), they are too expensive for the average user to keep in their garage.
I dare say you haven't considered all this and I'd bet you don't own an EV and have any experience with them either. But I'm the ignorant one? Yea right.
The question here is how long is "sooner or later"? Your implication is it won't be long, prices will go up as supply dries up.
The fundamental problem with your idea is when you look at the actual supply and usage numbers, it clearly says we have decades of natural gas available at current price levels. PLUS, as the price of gas increases, the amount of "economically recoverable" gas increases (the amount of gas that can be recovered for a profit only goes up).
Experts agree that we have a decade or more of natural gas at current prices and multiple decades of supply with only small price increases. So, from your "sooner or later" measure, the answer is later, much later. Maybe my grand-kids will have to deal with this eventuality, but it's not happening in my lifetime.
The investigation is a reactive measure. A proactive measure would be requiring CenturyLink to have and follow a procedure that would both provide adequate review and offer a rapid backout if this sort of crap happens.
SO.. Your answer is MORE regulation and oversight by the organization that you say wasn't doing it's oversight job to start with?
Right... Yea, that's a logical position. Sort of like having the fox write the procedures for guarding the hen house after the theft of some chickens...
How about we wait for the investigation to be conducted and find out what it uncovers? There is no sense in trying to fix something when you are not sure what's really broken. It may not be an oversight issue at all, it may be some company defaulting on their legal requirements. How about we let the FCC find out what the issue is before we blame somebody for it or start trying to fix it..
EVs? You mean Electric Vehicles? With Natural Gas so cheap?
I seriously doubt EV's are posed to be deployed in numbers enough to reduce our fossil fuel usage here in the USA. There is no way they can become cheap enough to take over a significant portion of the private vehicle fleet in the USA, especially with fossil fuel prices where they are for the foreseeable future (With oil prices in the dumpster and Natural Gas prices heading that way).
Electric cars will remain a niche market for now. They are too expensive to make, have huge maintenance costs when you have to replace the batteries every couple of years of daily use and just don't go far enough on a charge to capture the majority of the commuter market.
For EV's to take over, they will have to be half their current costs (without the subsidies) and fossil fuels will have to head back up to the $120 bbl range where gas was nearing $4/gal and stay there for at least one or two car buying cycles (6-12 years). I just don't see either as possible, much less both.
Natural Gas is SOO cheap these days (thanks to fracking) and the experts say there is very little possible way demand outstrips supply enough to cause any serious price increase. CNG burns well in internal combustion engines with very little modifications (just change out the valve seats and fuel injection stuff) and voila, it works great with low emissions. Range is a bit of a nuance but refueling is fast and cheap and CNG is readily available if you know where to look.
Maybe you should learn to read." President Trump's new proposal does not repeal the regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, but it would lay the groundwork for doing so by weakening a key legal justification for the measure"
Because it literally WAS NOT Trump that did this. He, nor his people, purposed this. It was court ordered after the last administration overstepped their bounds by ordering the EPA to do something they didn't have the legal authority to do.
IF you don't like the law, lobby congress to get it changed. Until it's changed, can we follow the law please? That's how this country is supposed to work you know.
... it's a Trump'ish way of helping "big industry", "big coal", "big oil", etc.
No it's not. This is complying with a court order... Where the EPA must justify it's regulations using real science and facts. What happened is the EPA was ordered by the LAST administration to violate the law and now that mistake is being corrected.
That it benefits these other industries is not why this is being done, but it's being done to comply with the law as written and interpreted by the courts.
So this isn't anything more than what happens when you live in a country of laws and courts.... OR are you opposed to that now?
So, they announce they are investigating an outage and you claim they lack oversight? They are doing what you are saying are they not?
What likely happened is some untrained idiot made an unapproved change that rippled through the call routing tables and messed the 911 exception stuff up. This is the reason we used to never make network changes after thanksgiving, when folks started heading out on vacation, until they returned in January. That way some half baked change that wasn't vetted by competent eyes before it got implemented.
This isn't lack of FCC oversight, it's human error.... Most likely anyway.
Because, as we see here, leaving it in the hands of our angelic corporate masters will serve us without fail.
Government should be involved as little as possible and as local as possible. There are times it's the only choice, to be sure, but I think that is a lot less involvement than most would think.
So it's a false argument you make. I'm not advocating a "no government" policy, only a "less government" one. There needs to be a balance in this, but I'm very sure that we've passed well beyond the point where government is too big. Corporations have their dangers, but government is more dangerous.
Dont be stupid. Democrat party is anti-american. They would celebrate 911 outage bigly.
I totally disagree with you on this. I am a Republican, but I don't think Democrats are all just lusting for power and wrong about what they want to accomplish, at least for the rank and file members of the party. They mean well and want what's best, as they see it.
I do disagree strongly with the means by which they attempt to obtain their goals. They are too short sighted and wrong headed about how best to accomplish their goals. They tend to lead with their emotions and forget to ask "and then what happens" when they advocate their policy choices, and I feel that this puts us all to often in the land of unforeseen consequence (for them), when they refuse to listen to reasoned objections to their ideas.
I'm sure they have their issues with me and my kind too.... I just wish we could discuss it like people instead of playing the sound bite game and political gotcha.
Yes, and they have been for decades. Political appointees rarely understand the topics the FCC is tasked to regulate, and usually are making bad decisions based on their political handler's wishes and lobbyist money.
We left the situation where FCC commissioners where actually experts in the field, picked for their technical skills, knowledge and experience, long long ago. The FCC (and other government organizations) have become the political hands and feet of the appointing administration without regard to what's best for the people, but only thinking about what's best for the politicians doing the appointing and serving the interests of the lobbyists who fund our political systems.
Which to me, is the best argument for NOT having government involvement. Some things only government can do, but in the general case, getting government involved only makes it less reliable and more expensive.
The Trump FCC doing a great job again. Ajit has been the best chairman ever at the FCC. Can anyone honestly to say that a Clinton-Soros run FCC would be investigated this kind of thing? Obviously not.
Huh? Did you mean that the former FCC wouldn't have investigated this or that the former FCC would not have been investigated for this?
Somehow, I don't think either are true. The FCC has a pretty dim view of 911 service outages regardless of it's political affiliation at any specific time. Republicans and Democrats both are pretty much on board for 911 service.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, sorry... The current cost is set at 5.6 Billion, my mistake.
Yea, it will only cost you 5 Billion and the next national election..... Don't be fooled, this isn't about money... it's about votes.... For BOTH sides.
no, but touché`
What a free market you have there, SO FREE, so free to be f######. LOL.
Dude, the free market can kill AT&T for this as well. This could be a nightmare for their PR department as they try to "fix" the damage should this go viral or something. (and no, Slashdot is NOT going viral..)
The customer is free to leave, subject to their contract restrictions of course, should AT&T squander all their good will with their customers.
Isn't this an old story from a couple of days ago?
The problem with DuckDuckGo is that, when it comes to searching
Who would have thought that indexing the internet and the algorithms behind it would be a hard problem?
Oh, it's not the search and indexing of the internet that's hard.. I participated in building a web crawler that could index the internet if you let it run long enough, problem was the indexes quickly got huge and unmanageable. What's hard? It's the return of results in a reasonable amount of time that's hard..
Manufacturing can be clean or dirty, depending on how you do it but it's 100% pollution free after that. Fossil fuels also go through a manufacturing process which can be clean or dirty and it's 100% polluting after that.
What does that even mean? There are 100 years old hydroelectric power plants still in use today.
Can you imagine the environmental impact statement of Hoover Dam today? Just the manufacturing of the concrete would be a non-starter based on the C02 it would release and I cannot imagine what they'd say about the river wildlife it would disrupt.
Yes, I'm being tongue in cheek a bit here, but EVERYTHING we do to generate electricity on an industrial scale is dirty business in some way.
There's no pollution in the disposal after its life expectancy?
Oh, it exists, but is insignificant compared to fossil fuel.
Just dumping things in a landfill might not look pretty but it is a lot better than burning it up.
I'm curious what you think pollution is here..
Fossil fuels, natural gas, oil, coal, have varying levels of waste though their life cycles as does Wind, Solar and other forms of "green" energy. Until we actually define what is pollution and what's not we are all playing an apples and oranges game anyway.
I'm going to reiterate what I'm saying about EV's again.
EV's will NOT be purchased in sufficient numbers to stop the growth of demand in the gasoline market. 2-3% is not enough volume. Gasoline usage will continue to increase.
We can argue about WHY 2-3% is all the sales EV's can manage if you like, but be clear what I'm saying.
The reasons why EV's are not more popular are pretty clear.
1. PRICE - They are more expensive to purchase. And not just a little bit more, a LOT more.
2. Range Anxiety - Because it takes a long time to refuel them, folks worry about getting stuck waiting. Americans loath waiting. We also don't like thinking ahead. Both are required to road trip with an EV, and we Americans like our road trips, or at least having the option of taking one. Remember that in the USA we have our population spread over a HUGE area, we drive very long distances as a result. EV's suffer because their range is limited and the refueling time is long on road trips. Thus range anxiety is real, even if 95% of the trips taken don't push the limits at all.
3. Gasoline prices - The ROI of buying an EV right now don't make much sense with gasoline under $2/gal. What's the break even now? 5 years? 10? Where I live, gas prices have fallen greatly, while electricity prices have risen significantly, this makes the ROI of that EV even further out than before.
4. Maintenance costs - Yea, overall they may be cheaper after 10 years, but you will be replacing that battery just about the time you break even at current fuel prices. Sinking 1/3rd of the vehicle's initial value back into the car to keep it on the road just isn't a popular thing, but if you don't drive that EV for 20 or so years, you literally saved nothing for all that money you put up front.
To that I would point out that EV's #1 reason for being unpopular is even AFTER significant government regulation advantages, both after tax abatements and the CAFE fleet mileage standards. We are literally forcing manufacturers to sell these things, paying a significant part of their development costs and paying consumers to take them, and still 3% is all we can manage? I must be right about something here...
And more on your ignorance: while LI batteries may come with a "charge cycle rating", what appears to affect lifetime most is time spent at 100% SoC. Rapid charging at high SoC and temperature all add to capacity loss. Battery chemistry also affects life.
Most EV manufacturers provide a means to regulate charging to something less than 100% -- either manually setting the charge limit, or hiding some battery capacity. In this way, the lifetime of the LI battery can be much greater than 400-1200 cycles.
EV manufacturers also reduce charge speeds at higher SoC and regulate battery temperatures to improve life. In this way, a long life can be expected from many EV batteries.
Again,I say the following..
Sure, if you don't use all the battery capacity you purchase, they can and will last longer, a lot longer. HOWEVER, this just means that you pay more for the vehicle as battery capacity costs money. It also means that you choose to charge to less than full range and need to drive it less than the full distance to get the best battery life you can. AND if you cannot do the above, you will wear out your battery pack quicker and be in need of a replacement much sooner than what you may be able to afford.
So you pay more for the vehicle, have to use it at less than full capacity at less than full range to make it last. You also have to PLAN ahead if you want to use the full range, you have to plan your road trips around charging stations and charging delays. So paying more for the vehicle and it's inconvenient too? Not a good set of selling points....
But that's my point... I'm not saying that EV's don't work, I'm saying that they won't be purchased by consumers in large enough numbers to make much of a dent in fossil fuel demand. At least not in the foreseeable future.
So, to summarize.. You paid for battery capacity you don't use regularly. Of course, if you don't take the individual cells though a complete discharge charge cycle, it's going to last a lot longer.... BUT you pay for all that capacity, you bought a bigger battery and paid more for the car.
So by paying MORE for the vehicle, you get one that has a bigger battery and lasts longer.... Problem is you end up paying more per mile to drive that thing, given today's fuel costs, a LOT more, at least initially. What's the ROI on a Tesla these days? How far do you have to drive it before you make up the price you'd pay buying gasoline? Right now, (unless Tesla's price has come way down) I'm guessing the break even point is still way past 100K miles. BUT, if you regularly drove that Tesla to it's range limits before you charged it nearly full to do it again, you are going to wear out that battery pack pretty darn quick.
Range anxiety is real and requires that you at least THINK about road trips in advance. You do NOT want to get stuck someplace with your Tesla and a 15A 115VAC plugin where you will be lucky to get under 10 Miles per hour of charge... It will be a LONG wait to get say 50 miles of range, or say you need to top off while at grandma's house in the middle of nowhere, you better have a few days. Americans are not used to having to think though such things, so they get anxious about it, and that is another reason to not buy an EV. Cost first, Range anxiety second.
However, my point here is not that EV's won't work, nor that they don't work. My point is that they are NOT going to be taking over enough of the national private vehicle fleet to have much effect on fossil fuel use. They may reduce the rate of increase in demand, but refiners can count on an ever increasing demand over time. EV's are just not cheap enough to be the vehicle of choice and that's not changing. They are WAY more expensive to build and coupled with range anxiety issues simply will not be purchased in large enough numbers in the foreseeable future.
There is another way in which you are ignorant. You claim that EVs don't have sufficient range for commuting for most drivers, yet, here is a study that shows that EVs can easily meet the requirements of 95% of all trips:
Sure 95% of trips but folks have range anxiety anyway because they worry that you never know when you will hit that 5% trip beyond your range. The problem is that folks don't want a car they have to leave at home when they head to grandma's house, especially a car that costs way more than your average vehicle for which they struggle to make the monthly payments on to start with. So folks opt for zero range anxiety and buy fossil fueled cars.
As for life of the batteries, life depends on usage (charge to 100%?), and chemistry. Actual studies on real Tesla batteries show a much longer typical life:
But they do wear out. Prius batteries where degrading their range limits in about 5-6 years, if my friend's car was a valid example. He was getting 70% of his initial new range at about 5 years. Yea, it's not a 100% EV, but it's a data point.
I understand that batteries wear out at different rates, depending on how fast and far they are discharged and charged, temperature and a whole host of variables, but they DO wear out. Plus the problem will compound itself over time, as your battery range decreases and you start using a higher and higher percentage of it each day you will be wearing it out faster. Rule of numb is 1200 cycles is the high end and unless you have a less than average commute, you are going to get about 5-6 years, maybe a bit more, but once the payments stop on your new car purchase, you will be looking to finance a battery replacement, which will be a significant portion of a new car cost.
Most folks who look at the economics of this, coupled with the range anxiety and up front purchase price differential, won't touch an EV. It just doesn't make immediate financial sense to pay the price of a luxury car, buy and install a $5k charger in your house on top of that, then in 5-6 years have to sink half the price of a new car to keep it on the road... Then, where it may be great 95% of the time, when you want to take a long trip to grandma's house and have to stop every 200 miles for an hour or so coming and going (assuming there are charging stations properly located) it starts looking more like a toy and not a car.
I dare say you haven't considered all this and I'd bet you don't own an EV and have any experience with them either. But I'm the ignorant one? Yea right.
Yes, you are the ignorant one. We have not one, but two EVs in my household: a Model 3 and a Leaf.
I'm glad they work for you, but they won't work for me and many others who think about it don't think they would work for them either. Face it, if you took away the CAFE fleet mileage standards, EV's would die as fast as a field of clover in death valley in summer. Few could afford one (they cost more to build than fossil fueled cars by far), They have higher maintenance costs per mile, and right now with gasoline running $1.70 /gal in my neck of the woods are going to cost you way more to drive per mile when it's all said and done. I'll get further on my dollar than you in the long run, at least at current fuel prices.
Enjoy your financial boondoggle... Two EV's? Wow, they got you twice. Let me guess, you purchase your Electricity on the "all wind power" source and pay more for it too... So you pay a premium to dive those EV's and who knows what else you pay more for. I'll stick to my cheap, comfortable and quick to fill up gasoline powered pickup truck thank you. If gasoline gets too expensive I'll convert it to natural gas, which will be cheap for as long as that vehicle will go down the road safely. I'll be money ahead of an EV, and miles ahead of it on a road trip too. :)
So, I take it you are for NOT following the law then? What kind of country do you want? Or is this just "GET TRUMP" at any cost, including abandoning the rule of law.... I sure hope you don't believe that, but it sure seems like that's what you want.
I'm ignorant? Let's see about that...
Lithium Ion batteries have a "charge cycle" rating of between 400-1200 cycles. IF you use your EV every day, or nearly every day of the year to drive to work, you are going to have about 300 charge cycles a year (5 work days and 1 day of weekend driving). That makes your battery life a maximum of 4 years.
Another problem is loss of capacity. Once you reach the point where your EV cannot make it to work and back on a charge and have at least SOME reserve capacity to hit the grocery store or pick up the kids from school, you will be needing a new battery long before it stops working.
These facts are hard and range anxiety is the second most important reason folks don't buy EV's, price is the first. If your EV's range is ever decreasing due to battery wear, that just means folks won't be as likely to initially buy EV's and less likely to keep them as they wear. With repair costs (battery replacement) being as high as it is (as much as half the original purchase price), they are too expensive for the average user to keep in their garage.
I dare say you haven't considered all this and I'd bet you don't own an EV and have any experience with them either. But I'm the ignorant one? Yea right.
The question here is how long is "sooner or later"? Your implication is it won't be long, prices will go up as supply dries up.
The fundamental problem with your idea is when you look at the actual supply and usage numbers, it clearly says we have decades of natural gas available at current price levels. PLUS, as the price of gas increases, the amount of "economically recoverable" gas increases (the amount of gas that can be recovered for a profit only goes up).
Experts agree that we have a decade or more of natural gas at current prices and multiple decades of supply with only small price increases. So, from your "sooner or later" measure, the answer is later, much later. Maybe my grand-kids will have to deal with this eventuality, but it's not happening in my lifetime.
The investigation is a reactive measure. A proactive measure would be requiring CenturyLink to have and follow a procedure that would both provide adequate review and offer a rapid backout if this sort of crap happens.
SO.. Your answer is MORE regulation and oversight by the organization that you say wasn't doing it's oversight job to start with?
Right... Yea, that's a logical position. Sort of like having the fox write the procedures for guarding the hen house after the theft of some chickens...
How about we wait for the investigation to be conducted and find out what it uncovers? There is no sense in trying to fix something when you are not sure what's really broken. It may not be an oversight issue at all, it may be some company defaulting on their legal requirements. How about we let the FCC find out what the issue is before we blame somebody for it or start trying to fix it..
EVs? You mean Electric Vehicles? With Natural Gas so cheap?
I seriously doubt EV's are posed to be deployed in numbers enough to reduce our fossil fuel usage here in the USA. There is no way they can become cheap enough to take over a significant portion of the private vehicle fleet in the USA, especially with fossil fuel prices where they are for the foreseeable future (With oil prices in the dumpster and Natural Gas prices heading that way).
Electric cars will remain a niche market for now. They are too expensive to make, have huge maintenance costs when you have to replace the batteries every couple of years of daily use and just don't go far enough on a charge to capture the majority of the commuter market.
For EV's to take over, they will have to be half their current costs (without the subsidies) and fossil fuels will have to head back up to the $120 bbl range where gas was nearing $4/gal and stay there for at least one or two car buying cycles (6-12 years). I just don't see either as possible, much less both.
Natural Gas is SOO cheap these days (thanks to fracking) and the experts say there is very little possible way demand outstrips supply enough to cause any serious price increase. CNG burns well in internal combustion engines with very little modifications (just change out the valve seats and fuel injection stuff) and voila, it works great with low emissions. Range is a bit of a nuance but refueling is fast and cheap and CNG is readily available if you know where to look.
Actually, Natural Gas is killing Coal and Nuclear power in the USA. It's just soooo cheap here.
Maybe you should learn to read." President Trump's new proposal does not repeal the regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, but it would lay the groundwork for doing so by weakening a key legal justification for the measure"
Because it literally WAS NOT Trump that did this. He, nor his people, purposed this. It was court ordered after the last administration overstepped their bounds by ordering the EPA to do something they didn't have the legal authority to do.
IF you don't like the law, lobby congress to get it changed. Until it's changed, can we follow the law please? That's how this country is supposed to work you know.
... it's a Trump'ish way of helping "big industry", "big coal", "big oil", etc.
No it's not. This is complying with a court order... Where the EPA must justify it's regulations using real science and facts. What happened is the EPA was ordered by the LAST administration to violate the law and now that mistake is being corrected.
That it benefits these other industries is not why this is being done, but it's being done to comply with the law as written and interpreted by the courts.
So this isn't anything more than what happens when you live in a country of laws and courts.... OR are you opposed to that now?
It's lack of oversight is serving us quite badly.
So, they announce they are investigating an outage and you claim they lack oversight? They are doing what you are saying are they not?
What likely happened is some untrained idiot made an unapproved change that rippled through the call routing tables and messed the 911 exception stuff up. This is the reason we used to never make network changes after thanksgiving, when folks started heading out on vacation, until they returned in January. That way some half baked change that wasn't vetted by competent eyes before it got implemented.
This isn't lack of FCC oversight, it's human error.... Most likely anyway.
Because, as we see here, leaving it in the hands of our angelic corporate masters will serve us without fail.
Government should be involved as little as possible and as local as possible. There are times it's the only choice, to be sure, but I think that is a lot less involvement than most would think.
So it's a false argument you make. I'm not advocating a "no government" policy, only a "less government" one. There needs to be a balance in this, but I'm very sure that we've passed well beyond the point where government is too big. Corporations have their dangers, but government is more dangerous.
Dont be stupid. Democrat party is anti-american. They would celebrate 911 outage bigly.
I totally disagree with you on this. I am a Republican, but I don't think Democrats are all just lusting for power and wrong about what they want to accomplish, at least for the rank and file members of the party. They mean well and want what's best, as they see it.
I do disagree strongly with the means by which they attempt to obtain their goals. They are too short sighted and wrong headed about how best to accomplish their goals. They tend to lead with their emotions and forget to ask "and then what happens" when they advocate their policy choices, and I feel that this puts us all to often in the land of unforeseen consequence (for them), when they refuse to listen to reasoned objections to their ideas.
I'm sure they have their issues with me and my kind too.... I just wish we could discuss it like people instead of playing the sound bite game and political gotcha.
Is the FCC run by morons?
Yes, and they have been for decades. Political appointees rarely understand the topics the FCC is tasked to regulate, and usually are making bad decisions based on their political handler's wishes and lobbyist money.
We left the situation where FCC commissioners where actually experts in the field, picked for their technical skills, knowledge and experience, long long ago. The FCC (and other government organizations) have become the political hands and feet of the appointing administration without regard to what's best for the people, but only thinking about what's best for the politicians doing the appointing and serving the interests of the lobbyists who fund our political systems.
Which to me, is the best argument for NOT having government involvement. Some things only government can do, but in the general case, getting government involved only makes it less reliable and more expensive.
The Trump FCC doing a great job again. Ajit has been the best chairman ever at the FCC. Can anyone honestly to say that a Clinton-Soros run FCC would be investigated this kind of thing? Obviously not.
Huh? Did you mean that the former FCC wouldn't have investigated this or that the former FCC would not have been investigated for this?
Somehow, I don't think either are true. The FCC has a pretty dim view of 911 service outages regardless of it's political affiliation at any specific time. Republicans and Democrats both are pretty much on board for 911 service.